{"id":1771,"date":"2005-08-09T12:18:44","date_gmt":"2005-08-09T19:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/08\/09\/is-race-traitor-racist-depends-on-who-says-it\/"},"modified":"2005-08-09T12:18:44","modified_gmt":"2005-08-09T19:18:44","slug":"is-race-traitor-racist-depends-on-who-says-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1771","title":{"rendered":"Is "Race Traitor" Racist? Depends on Who Says It"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an earlier thread, trying to make the case that liberals are racist, Niels Jackson wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

If you think that liberals don’t use the term “race traitor,” you haven’t looked very hard. Try reading up on what some liberals say about Clarence Thomas. For example, Manning Marable explicitly says<\/a> that Thomas (and other conservative blacks) are race traitors. So does a book edited by two Georgetown professors<\/a>. Use Google, and you’ll find plenty more references. (Such as this Margaret Cho<\/a> article about none other than Michelle Malkin, or this article<\/a> about Condi Rice.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

David of the admirable blog The Debate Link (which currently has a good post, quoting an anonymous comment-writer, criticizing left-wing racism<\/a>) seemed to endorse Niels’ links,<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n

I have to wonder if Niels and David even read the links in question. For instance, as the Daily Howler link Niels provided explained<\/a>, the book edited by two Georgetown professors (Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment<\/a><\/em>) didn’t<\/i> call Thomas or anyone else a “race traitor”; it objected <\/i>to that sort of attack. As the Daily Howler – again, in the link Niels himself provided – points out, a Lexis-Nexis search found only one example of Thomas being called a “race traitor” in any mainstream news outlet; clearly, the term was not commonly used.<\/p>\n

Although it’s true that Margaret Cho used the term “race traitor,” in context she used it ironically<\/a>; her point is that it’s a positive thing that Asians and people of color are free to be right-wingers nowadays, even though she finds Malkin’s view odious. Cho writes:<\/p>\n

I feel kind of proud, that racial politics have progressed to the point where we can have a young Asian American woman who doesn’t have to live within the constraints of a minority identity, which presumes liberal bias just by nature of the fact that if you are oppressed by the majority, you would want to place yourself against the majority.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cho’s essay, along with other links Niels provided, shows that what’s going on is more subtle than right-wingers admit. There are liberals who call right-wing blacks “race traitors,” but the liberals in question are disproportionately people of color. More specifically (although Cho is an exception), they’re usually Black. “Race traitor” is not the typical vocabulary used by liberals when talking about non-white conservatives; but it’s sometimes part of the vocabulary used by Blacks when having debates that take place within the Black community.<\/p>\n

I don’t find Blacks using the term “race traitor” objectionable the way I’d find the same term used by whites (liberal or not) objectionable. It’s a little like when Chris Rock uses the word “nigger.” I don’t think it’s acceptable for whites to say “nigger,” by and large. But at the same time, it’s not my place, as a white guy, to police the language Blacks use when having debates about Black identity politics within the Black community. That’s none of my business.<\/p>\n

Returning to the point, as far as I can tell, Black lefties are the only <\/i>lefties to use the term “race traitor” with any regularity. It’s ridiculous for conservatives to imply that this is proof of widespread racism among lefties.<\/p>\n

Context – that is, what race the speaker is – does matter. It’s clear that when blacks use the word “nigger” or its derivatives, they’re not using it in the anti-black way it’s typically been used by white racists. Similarly, the analogy between right-wing racists who have used “race traitor” (for whites who favored civil rights), and anti-racist Blacks who use the same term, doesn’t hold much water. Read this Manning Marable essay Niels linked to<\/a>, for example:<\/p>\n

This conservative wing of the black middle class during the 1980s and 1990s, in effect, committed “racial suicide,”\u009d in the sense that it disavowed any sense of obligation, or “linked fates,”\u009d with what happens to the masses of disadvantaged African Americans. There is no sense of personal responsibility or accountability to a political project that is race-based. They wish to be judged as “individuals,”\u009d not as part of the larger “black community.”\u009d They explicitly reject any notions of the concept that their career advancement was largely a product of a mass, democratic movement to challenge structural racism. So in this limited sense, the reactionary wing of the black political elite has stopped being “black”\u009d in terms of its historical function as an oppositional group against racism. They are essentially “race traitors”\u009d: dedicated to the destruction of all racial categories, or even for some the collection of data indicating racial discrimination; critical of the liberal integrationist establishment; and enthusiastic boosters of capitalism as we know it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Would anyone seriously argue that this is no different from a KKK rant?<\/p>\n

The bottom line is, blacks who argue about if Clarence Thomas is a “race traitor” are making an argument about solidarity, and trying to hold the line against racism. It’s not our place, as whites against racism, to tell Blacks what language they should or shouldn’t use; whether or not I<\/em> like the term “race traitor,” in this context, is irrelevant. In contrast, whites who complain about white “race traitors” are hoping to protect the racist status quo<\/em> (or return to an even more racist past). To claim that the two uses of “race traitor” are equal is to ignore the substance of the two positions, and reduces anti-racism to a fuss about vocabulary. No, thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an earlier thread, trying to make the case that liberals are racist, Niels Jackson wrote: If you think that liberals don’t use the term “race traitor,” you haven’t looked very hard. Try reading up on what some liberals say … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}